


A Marriage of Two Souls

by fineandwittie



Category: Will (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, Marriage of True Minds, Spoilers, and i keep ending up with plot, i don't like it, i keep trying to write porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11631837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: Will helps Marlowe.





	A Marriage of Two Souls

Will couldn’t find it in himself to go back and try to work things out with Anne. He should. He knew he should. She was his wife and he’d made a vow to her, but she was the one who threw him out. 

He couldn’t go to the theater. He didn’t know if Alice was there or not, but he couldn’t chance it. He didn’t think he could stand seeing her right now. Not when everything was falling apart and she was at the center of it all. 

So Will wandered the streets of London, hoping for answers, but despairing of finding any.

The reaching fingers of dawn were just cresting the roofs, when Will turned a corner and caught sight of a figure that made him stop in his tracks. 

Will hadn’t seen Marlowe since the party from which he himself had run. Kit’s demands still echoed in his ears and the ghostly faces of Baxter and his cousin still hovered at his peripherals. He hadn’t expected to see Kit any time soon. He imagine he’d embarrassed the other in front of his friends.

He wondered, in some detached part of his mind, when Marlowe had become Kit and if it even mattered.

But here he was, half-naked and covered in dirt. His face was bleeding, his eyes half-dead with exhaustion. He’d been crying.

Will must have made some sort of noise, because Kit lifted his dropping head and caught Will’s gaze. His mouth twitched into what might have been a smile.

Will was at his side in an instant, wrapping an arm around his waist to help support him. “Kit, are you alright? What happened? Who did this to you?”

Kit laughed, his voice harsh and rusty. “No one. I wanted it. I was supposed to die. Are you dead, Will?”

Will flinched at the nonsense and filed the death wish away to consider later. “I’m very much alive.”

“Mmm.” Kit leaned in to Will and nudged at Will’s neck with his nose. “Yes. You are.”

Will laughed, a little helpless and a lot exasperated. “Let’s get you home and cleaned up. You look like you could use a good meal too.”

Luckily, they were only a few blocks from Kit’s house, hulking mausoleum that it was. Will shouldered the taller man through the gate. No one came to greet them. Will frowned, wondering where the servants might be. Such a large house would, by necessity, have servants. Maybe they did not live there and had not yet arrived. 

There was a water pump at the trough near the doors in the courtyard, so Will urged Kit to sit beneath it, in the trough. He pumped frigid water over the other man’s skin, which caused Kit to yelp and come alert.

He blinked, eyelids fluttering. “Will?”

Will stopped pumping and stepped back into Kit’s line of sight. “I’m here. Let’s get you inside before you catch your death. Now that you’re wet, we can scrub the rest of the mud off.”

There was no one inside and it looked as though the rooms had not been cleaned since the last time Will had been there. In the Great Room, where Kit’s long dining table sat, there were papers strewn about and a pentagram chalked onto the floor.

Will flinched away from it and the symbols of magic it bore, feeling ill at the very sight. “Is this something to do with what happened to you?”

Kit’s head was lolling again and he was slumping against Will’s side. “Yes. None of it worked.”

“Magic is notoriously dangerous, but it is also notoriously temperamental. I thought that was common knowledge?” Will glanced at Kit, slantwise, as he dumped him into a chair. “Maybe I am just a country bumpkin, but I would not suggest trying again whatever was done here.”

Kit blinked twice and swung his unfocused gaze up to Will, who gathered a napkin from the far end of the table and began wiping away the grime from Kit’s skin. “You know of magic?”

Will smiled and knelt at Kit’s side. “Yes. I know a little. I know what can be done with hedgewitchery. I know the shape and form of lurking spirits. I am Catholic and Catholics are hated almost as much as witches in England. One learns to recognize the signs of someone hiding in plain sight.”

“And what do you know of death?”

Will snorted. “Death is an intimate friend of mine. What of it do you not understand?”

Kit’s head rolled against the back of his chair. “What did you see? When you took the drug?”

Will blinked at the abrupt change of topic, but then considered. It wasn’t so abrupt after all, was it? “Hell. I saw Hell. And the spirits of the dead come to take me away with them.”

Kit swallowed, thick and raw, and Will watched the bob of his Adam’s apple. “Will, I…I must conquer it. Death. Life. Heaven, Hell. I must…”

Will shook his head, though Kit couldn’t see it. “No. It isn’t Death you must conquer. Death comes for everyone. Death is the only thing that every man, woman, and child can count upon. What you must conquer is your fear of it. I can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice. You are terrified.”

Kit grated out a sound that Will couldn’t quite identify. “Yes.”

“Are you dying, then?” The question nearly stuck in Will’s throat. He did not want to contemplate it.

Kit’s head lolled back and forth. “No. Someone…Someone very dear to me.”

Will nodded. “I’ll tell you this: Death is like sleep. Some people long for it and others avoid it, but all of us need it in the end. We sleep until the end of Days when we will all awaken to our final judgement. That is what I know of death. It makes life sweeter and all the more precious. Without it, what are we? Without it, how would we celebrate life and all its parts?”

Kit blinked sluggish eyes open and met Will’s gaze. “That is what you know?”

Will nodded again, a small smile curling his lips. “I have seen Hell and Heaven both alike. It would not be so terrible to pass on, wherever we are destined.”

Kit met his smile with a small curl of lips and drooping eyes. “Thank you, William Shakespeare. You have done what all the spirits and magics could not. You give me peace.”

His eyes slipped shut and his head lolled. Will took one last look at the man’s sharp features, before picking him and carrying himself upstairs.


End file.
